Durian Wine, Anyone?

AsianScientist (Jul. 18, 2013) - To all the epicureans out there, would you like to try some durian and papaya wine?

Since the early days of wine-making, grapes have always been the fruit of choice in the production of wine. Final-year PhD student Christine Lee and Honors student Fransisca Taniasuri from the Food Science and Technology Programme of the NUS Faculty of Science, under the supervision of Assistant Professor Liu Shao Quan, have decided to buck the trend, using fruits such as papaya and durian to make wine instead.

"Large quantities of papaya are wasted due to factors such as rapid post-harvest deterioration, high heat and humidity, poor handling, poor storage procedures and microbial infestations," said Lee, who first came up with the idea of producing papaya wine to avoid food wastage.

Over a five-year period, she labored over the wine-making process, using different inoculation strategies and introducing yeast species such as Saccharomyces and Williopsis.

The result was papaya wines with alcohol content spanning from 1.6 to 5.4 per cent. The wines also possess different characteristics and aroma profiles.

As for Taniasuri who chose to make wine from durian, she shared that though there are various durian products, limited studies have been conducted on alcoholic fermentation of the fruit.

She applied three treatments on the durian, namely alcoholic fermentation, simultaneous alcoholic-malolactic fermentation as well as sequential alcoholic-malolactic fermentation. The result is durian wine with alcohol content of six per cent and almost devoid of the fruit’s well-known pungent smell.

Moving forward, both of the young scientists are keen to collaborate with commercial partners who are interested in their technology.

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Source: NUS.
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